San Diego Zoo Day

Today Alison was a good sport and went with Debbie and me to the San Diego Zoo. Alison is not a fan of animals in cages. We figured the San Diego Zoo is world-famous and I really wanted to check it out. As far as zoos go it was really amazing.

Before we headed to the zoo we met Debbie on the roof of our hotel for breakfast. The breakfast filled us up and it was free, but the seating area was awesome. We had great views of the city. It was fun to sit and eat outside.

Our first stop at the zoo was the aerial tram. It took us to the polar area of the zoo. It was fun to fly over all of the animal areas. Looking down we could see quite a few different animals. There were also great views of the city. You could see all the way out to the ocean.

We exited the tram and headed over to the polar bears. This was possibly the coolest exhibit we saw all day. At first, the bears were hanging out right by the glass eating carrots. They are so huge and they would sit right up against the glass. Then one bear decided to go for a swim. It would go to the far shore and push off so that it would swim all the way back to the glass with just its nose sticking up above the water. When it hit the glass it would flip over underwater and push off the glass to swim back to the shore. It did this over and over again. It was really cool.

From the polar area, we walked down through an African area where we saw elephants, lions, and many other animals. One of Debbie’s favorite things at the zoo was seeing lions, tigers, and bears. She was excited to get pictures of all of them so that she could post them on Path with the tag oh, my!

Oh my!

The next area was the Australian outback. They had a bunch of trees that housed Koala bears. They were smaller than I expected. They would sleep hanging onto the trees. They were pretty cute and little.

We had to stop by the giraffes and get pictures. We would call the giraffes, Sophies because that is the name of Skylee’s toy giraffe. We often remarked how much fun it would be to bring Skylee to this zoo.

We found some monkeys that were a lot of fun to watch. There were a few adult monkeys and a baby. The little one was very mischievous. It had a ton of energy. It would run around the area they had set up and grab the other monkey’s faces or bite their tails. They would then try to grab the little one. Once it got caught and the bigger monkey held it up and hit its stomach. We were very entertained by the little monkey and we watched them for quite a while.

We stood in line for half an hour to see the pandas. They were supposed to be one of the highlights of the zoo.  We only saw one Panda and it was asleep, but it was still fun to see a live Panda.  Apparently, there are only a few places in the U.S. you can see a live Panda.

One thing that was really cool at this zoo was the number of baby animals. We saw baby monkeys, hippos, and gorillas. They were some of the highlights.

After the zoo, we got lunch at Panera Bread – Alison’s favorite.  It was delicious as always.  Our next stop was the beach.  We crossed the bridge to Coronado Island and went to Coronado Beach.  Debbie and I spent a lot of time splashing around the waves.  We love being in the water. As we were leaving the hotel the front desk staff told us to look for the gold shimmering in the water. It was really interesting the sand really did make the water shimmer like gold. Alison doesn’t like being cold, so she relaxed on the beach.  I did get her to dip her feet in once, but she said it was too cold to go any further. We also saw the famous Hotel del Coronado on the beach.  It looked beautiful and would be a really fun place to stay sometime! 

We walked around the beach for a while before heading back to the hotel.  We were hungry for dinner by this point so we went to the Hard Rock Café.  Their food was delicious as always and we even tried a giant fudge brownie Sundae.  By this point, we were thoroughly exhausted so we headed back to the hotel to go to bed.  We are excited for the rest of our adventures on this trip!